Strelok

On 3/8/2022 at 3:08 AM, Glflegolas said:

Water purification tablets. You need a fire to melt snow anyways so why not wait a little longer to make potable water? The only use of these tablets is if your fire gets blown out and you've got some unsafe water lying around your inventory. Or you're in a big rush to go somewhere and don't have the patience to boil your water. I might use tablets once ever 40-50 in-game days on average. Otherwise, I don't.

 

Just use them right away. Especially early in the game, where time is very precious. Very. Just use them and they are suddenly without any real effort indeed useful. It can be the difference between night and day to save even only 40 min in the early game. Literaly. Ask yourself what you could have done in early game to bolster up your situation while you wait there for clean water by heat. At least early game. And they are really not on the "i cant take them because of weight" type of item.

I did the mistake to horde them for "later". But later it is getting less usefull indeed.

But an item to save time is nowhere near useless in general. At best not important.

But as always, i could be wrong in thinking that time in early game is something not important and a little magic time pill should be called useless and be ignored.

Water purification is magic. Pure love. Just shake it and live in another time dimension.

And if you dont believe me. While you go to sleep because its getting dark, i go to the next spot to search for peoples stuff who didnt make it in time.

Sorry, i am a believer in the holy water purification tablet.

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On 2/18/2022 at 4:54 PM, I_eat_only_wolf_meat said:

AFAIK, you lose calories (food is lost) opening the cans any other way.  That is, until your cooking skill is high enough.  I forget what level cooking it is, but tat that point you can stop carrying the can opener around.

 

No. You only loose calories if you dont use any tool afaik. And the can opener has a further use even if you have cooking lvl 5. -> You save condition for your knife. -> You save whetstone. The only bad thing is additional 0.25 kg weight.

13 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I don't believe the linear decay formula kicks in until you enter a zone for the first time;

There is a mod which has an option that actually sets the decay rate particularely when you find the item and another option which sets the item decay before you find them. When you find them is defined by the pick up or inspection of that item. Could be a hint that your belief could be actually true. But not exaclty like you said that its about entering a region. So, still not certain what is exaclty the case.

On 1/30/2022 at 4:49 AM, SpanishMoss said:

I call water tablets "water doublers" because you can use them to double the amount of water you make in the same amount of time. The flashlight in my opinion is useless, because not only can you not use it during the Arouca, but it cannot be used as a light source to craft in the dark. It's only use is for stouts wolves, that's it.

I like water purification tables. But i would call them "fast water". The time aspect is more to me when i go for expeditions and want to save time.

59 minutes ago, piddy3825 said:

I know always carrying a fully fuled and repaired lantern can be excessively heavy considering the limited amount of carry capacity our characters have, but the light of a lit lantern almost always highlights items that might otherwise be overlooked.  Especially when looting locations that are otherwise dimly lighted even when it is bright and sunny outside.  There's something about the quality of the lantern's white lights brightness that makes it truly superior to that of torch light or a flare when it comes to looting interior cell spaces

Very important point. That is really crucial. It makes such a difference. And believe me or not. I went to some locations a second time with a torch or a storm lantern just because of even the daylight is sometimes not bright enough. But i would just not go so far to say that torch or flare is not good enough. But absolutely to bring ANY additional light source is really helpfull. Btw i never use flares to be a light source to loot indoor locations. I need them for warmth and light at blizzard/like weather and if its getting to dark outside and as antiwolf outdoors. But again, i am sitting on over 100 flares. I am such a overthrifty type of player. Like waiting for the sun to not use one of my thousands of matches. Its disgusting. But the way to go if you dont know how long term is. 

9 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I thought they weren't supposed to decay, but I've honestly never paid close attention to storing them before.  Correction:  Both missing stims have been found (accidentally put into a different container), along with (probably) all of the other missing meds (X transfers all of a category into the container - never noticed that before).

Right, they dont decay and therefore cannot disappear. And yea, the learning curve is really good in this game. Last thing i learned that i can use the sorting by weight helps alot for cooking fish. Because they differ so much in weight and therefore cooking time. And i dont like to have a 1.5 kg fish and a 4 kg fish on those 2 pots on the same fire ever again, especially if i have multiple fires running after 20 hours of fishing.

5 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Results of Broken Railroad Only Save #4 - Baseline Resources Low and Harvestable Plant Availability Medium - 136 Rose Hips, 31 Reshi Mushrooms, 20 Lichen, 71 Cat tails, 2 Maple Saplings, and 4 Birch Saplings

Changing only the Harvestable Plant Availability from High to Medium seems to trigger about a 25% reduction in the number of available plants regardless of Baseline Resources.  More tests would have to be done, however, for these data to average out more consistently and a firmer conclusion could be reached.

For an attempt to calculate the effects of changing sliders affecting other loot items (i.e. not plants), I now plan to make a custom base file where the harvestable plant settings will remain set at high and the other loot settings will be set in accordance with the baseline resources settings (i.e. interloper levels and stalker levels as applicable) then I'll do a separate pair of runs where the Empty Container Chance Modifier is lowered by one notch on the slider.  I will not be counting harvestable plants for these runs since those are the foods I plan to live on during the run.  The weather and starting gear will be set a Pilgrim levels. Dysentry, food poisoning, and other ailments will be disabled to ensure I won't need to use any meds during the run.  Animals will be set at passive so I can focus entirely on looting.  Items will be counted an logged as I find them (just in case item decay might cause some to disappear in containers before the run is done).  I will also note whether the items as found in a container or loose or placed.  It's as accurate and scientific as I can think to make it at this point, although I don't really anticipate being able to spot much of a meaningful trend given the random nature of loot to be found in containers in this game.

Incredible stuff. Thanks for your work. 25% is quite a good hint. No matter if its 20% or 30% in reality. For me its about the great picture, the question if its rather 5 or 25 round about so to speak. Marginal or significant in words.

Dont get lost out there doing this.

5 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

Considering I almost always find at least one if not two rifles on every map, finding 14 rifles wouldn't surprise me.

Mmh, you are absolutely right if i think that way. That way this is really not that strange. I think its 12 regions now, not inlcuding transition regions which also can have such things. Like Ravine etc. All that and i found 14 Rifles. Well you are right. Thats not off the charts then. I dont know why i look it at that like that. And 35 storm lanterns / 12 regions would be like 3 per region. Sounds reasonable too if i look it that way. Dammit you are right. But if it comes to how much i would actually need is another question. Because i now have 3 main bases and i would only really "need" like at least 3 rifles. Or lets say 6 because i like to have additional hunting spots like the Barn in PV or Trappers Cabin and even one extra rifle in my fishuts in CH or ML. So this way in would only need like 6 and it would not be a problem at all to just take what i need and stop gathering rifles if i have enough. But i cant leave things out there. I think i need to go to the doctor. Horder syndrome.🏥

And the funny thing about rifles in particular is that, i DID somehow know i dont need so much rifles, but me stupid thought i could just harvest the ones i dont need for scrap metals, which me stupid didnt realized that i cannot.🤫

6 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

 In your opinion, considering the items you found, is it worth the effort for the average player to spend time seeking them out? 

Yes its worth it. But its only my opinion. I dont know how other players would argue about that. If you are prepared and you already have discovered tha map beforehand (the same run) its easy but needs time to do. I did this only after i was already settled, had a base and enough supplies to do a search for prepper caches only. This is somewhat contraintuitive. Because you could need those stuff early on. But there are much easier and obvious locations to explore first. If i enter a new region, i first go short distances to obvious easy accessable locations and build up a base to operate from. Then later i did the prepper cache search. So to conclude, i didnt need them to survive. It was only a extra bonus so to speak. But its worth it nevertheless.

 

6 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

For one, I'm surprised you didn't find more rifle ammo and from your results you found 3 times as much revolver ammo, I find that to be significant.  I'm now curious as to what the ratio of spent casings would be?  rifle vs. revolver casings?  Did keep track of those by chance?

That i was not surprised of because i read somewhere that revolver ammo is plenty. My conclusion was then, rifle ammo would not be plenty. But casings i had trouble to find. Thats becasue casings are one of the most difficult items to be spottet i claim. I cannot give that number, because thats one of those things i did loose track of. But my honest estimation is like 30 revolver casings and 20 ammo casings. If you ask about how many shots i used its about 30 shots or so. From both rifle and revolver. Especially at the beginning where i am always bad at archery. A early revolver or rifle with some shots is godsend. Bow is my mid to late weapon.

 

6 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

Even considering the abundance of coffee tins to be found in the wreckage on Timberwolf Mountain where I presume you found the majority of the tins on a single map.

and

12 hours ago, Leeanda said:

You not only scoured the entire map but from what I gather dragged all said loot back to PV!  You have to do a really thorough search to  get everything !

Yes, i was even quite terrified of the abundance of loot there (TWM). To bring all down and then to PV was one of the most difficult things for me. Also it was the additonal AC loot which i had there. Also all loot from HRV and MT to ML is quite a big objective. 2 ropes from MT to ML. There you learn how to manage fatigue and when to use energy drinks etc. I think i lived in that cave between those 2 ropes from MT to ML for about 2 weeks or so to move my loot. No normal player would do that. I would even say no sane player would do that. But guess what? I dont care, i am insane.

 

Last thing to stress out again is to remember that i played at 3x length of day mulitplier. That way its not that hard. Because i know the difference to 1x lenght of day from my first 500 day voyager run where i did quite similar with the exeption that i didnt loot all AC and never visited HRV.

5 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Here are my counts count for Broken Railroad Only:

Broken Railroad Only:  Save 1 - Baseline Resources Medium, Harvestable Plant Availability High (i.e. same as Stalker settings):  176 Rose Hips (i.e. /24 = 7 1/3 teas); 41 Reshi mushrooms (i.e. /2 = 20.5 teas), 34 lichen (i.e. /3 = 11 1/3 dressings), 4 maple saplings, 4 birch saplings, 90 cat tails.  Save 2 - Baseline Resources Low, Harvestable Plant Availability High (i.e. same as Interloper settings):  176 Rose Hips (i.e. /24 = 7 1/3 teas); 36 Reshi mushrooms (i.e. /2 = 18 teas), 37 lichen (i.e. /3 = 12 1/3 dressings); 2 maple saplings, 5 birch saplings, 100 cat tails.

I did not count other items since I was focusing on the plants and eating whatever other foods I found.  A few interesting things though - the Heavy Hammer spawned inside the zone on both Baseline settings (something that has very rarely happened at any other time I've starting in Broken Railroad at any difficulty setting).  With baseline at medium, I found 5 tins of coffee and 3 jugs of maple syrup, along with 2 sets of snow pants and 2 cowichan sweaters.  I don't think I've ever been that fortunate finding clothing in that zone before.  Zone by zone, the random loot is probably just too variable to derive meaningful data unless 100s of saves are tested.

Could it be possible that you think that Baseline Recources have an effect on Harvastable Plants Availability? Because the numbers give me the impression that it doesnt matter. And if so, its marginal.

12 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Well, to expand... I feel that the "stresses" of dealing with predators with differing behaviors at the two different standard difficulties does more to skew the impression of how much loot is really out there than changing the empty container modifier.

This i dont understand. Can you explain further?

On 1/27/2022 at 5:45 AM, piddy3825 said:

Also, what surprised you as to your findings?  Was there anything that gave you an "ah ha" moment?  

 

Eventually i dont understand what you mean by that. But if you have found 14 rifles or 35 storm lanterns, then you start scratching your head. Or what you do mean?

On 1/27/2022 at 5:45 AM, piddy3825 said:

I'm also curious if you discovered and included  the extra loot found in all the prepper's caches, 3 now available in game with the new BlackRock region?

Yes i found them all. But that was really not easy. Weeks for only that.

7 hours ago, Leeanda said:

You must have so much patience to go to all that trouble! What can I say but bravo to you!

Thank you 🙂. But why do you think that it was trouble?  I just wanted to play a custom game and want all the goodies and discover every location. And after that it actually took me only 30 min to run down the numbers of the loot in my base in PV + 5 rock caches filled up and sorted. 3x lenght of day multiplier allowed me to do all this looting and exploring in a reasonable time. So no big trouble at all. The only trouble is that i found out that its more loot as i expected and much easier because of both lenght of day x3 and loot settings. So next time i will try another custom game with 2x lenght of day and stalker loot closest to interloper. Additionally i will use mods, especially the mod called Extreme Temperature Drop. There i can set the maximum Temperature drop to something like -25°C or even -30°C 🥶 (-20 is interloper). And eventually i use Animal Behavior mod to experiment with bears 🐻 charge at 100m just for fun.

The reason to use mods for me is that i would like to have more than 1x length of day multiplier but still challenging. With vanilla settings i cannot achieve that. So i have to use mods to make it more challenging while keeping length of day above 1x. 4x and 3x now i can say is really too easy. And it feels a bit off in regard of balance. As someone wrote about it: 2x could be the sweat spot if you dont like 1x.

The first game was vanilla voyager 500 days. Then i did a 4x lenght of day custom which i stopped soon because of other settings i didnt like. Then i started this 3x custom with some harsher settings.

The main conclusion for me is, that it is not the loot settings which is the most challenging thing. Its the lenght of day multi which is crucial. But i dont like the 1x. So i have to try further setups to get my balanced game.

11 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Changing the container density also has an impact, although there is no indication whether this was done or not.

I didnt. Only empty container mulitplier was changed in regards to loot settings.

But to clarify again. This was not a run to elaborate numbers for comparison on difficulties in the first place. That only came to mind after i explored and looted all regions. But as i was so decisive to find all, i am quite certain that i found around 95% of loot. And furthermore i was gathering it all in one place where i can make notes where and how much i want to distribute my loot to my multiple main bases. At that point i was thinking of doing a sharing of numbers here.

On 1/26/2022 at 5:02 PM, manolitode said:

Was curious how the loot in your playthrough in custom stalker compared to my interloper run pre AC and BRM.

@UpUpAway95I think its this one which contributes to the difference in plants. AC is plenty of cat tail stalks and BRM is not few either. And furthermore i dont know how decisive manolitode was to find all of them. I searched for plants like an fanatic. I even went to look twice sometimes. Especially mushrooms and cat tail stalks. Only the comparison of old beard's lichen quantities are somewhat strange in that regard.

42 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Harvestable plant availability is set to "high" in both stalker and interloper templates.  Therefore, the number of cat tails, rose hips, reshi mushrooms, and saplings should be approximately the same.  I suspect the differences shown here are just due to random chance factors or the difference in timing between the two runs being compared.

Good point. He got 2 less regions to explore that run in the past. Plus your point about random chance.

@manolitodeOne thing i found to correct is the number of Storm lanterns. Its 35 not 15 in your comparison table. 35 is crazy but thats the right number.

Thank you. Of course i dont mind. The opposite is true. I am very glad that someone did that too. This is amazing to have comparisons about that. Thank you for that.

About the books. Well you got me there. I was totally unaware of counting the books. I totally forgot. I was eating them alive so to speak. Even worse, as i was hitting lvl 5 of all skills, i burned them. Shame on me. I even will not be able to guess how much.

About the time to do this. It was not really difficult because, first this was 3x length of day multiplier, means i needed close to 300 days but it was not that much in real time then because of that. Second, most of the items i just stored away at one base (PV) and then i just looked in my rock caches and the storages in my main base where i first gathered them together, and counted them. But i didnt have the intention to count anything at first for the commnutiy. Only later i was thinking to do that. Because first i wanted to have multiple bases (PV + ML + CH) and wanted to have homogen spread out those items on my different bases. Then only i came to the idea to have those numbers to give to the community to be able to have a grasp of quantities.

To get into some details as example about my numbers: i wondered why there are so much quality tools in comparison to simple tools. I didnt expect to find about the same numbers. I expected to have alot more simple tools than quality tools. Or another case are rifles and revolvers. It was 14:10 rifles to revolvers. Didnt expect that either. Because the chance i just didnt find a couple of revolvers more is low. Means it seams to be just the randomness then i believe. Or storm lanterns. 35! wth. And so on.

Thank you again that you did about the same thing on interloper. This is awesome.

I will now read through your numbers and i am very exciting about that. Eventually there will be a little discussion about this.

30 minutes ago, Leeanda said:

Hope it wasn't all over your keyboard?🙂

Nah. I turned my head. 🗣️

I have started a custom game mostly with stalker settings and did a full exploration of all regions.

Stalker(ish*) means that i set empty container chance modifier from medium to none. Means there are just not additional empty containers. But there are still alot of empty ones. So keep that in mind. Its not absolute Stalker there.

One thing to be aware of is that i did set the length of day multiplier to 3x, which makes it significant easier, but gave me the opportunity to discover all the Great Bear Island regions in only slightly under 300 days. Means that at vanilla 1x i would have needed roughly 900 days one could say. But realistically certainly more than 900 days because its getting harder at 1x. I would estimate about 1000 days with my playstyle to discover all Great Bear Island regions at 1x lenght of day multi. I play slow but safe.

Now the next thing to be aware of is that i certainly have not found 100% of all loot. I guess its at least 90% up to 95% of all loot. But in average.

Last thing is that i will only give you rough numbers on many items just to make it easier to me to present and for you to get the rough grasp of quantities. Those quantities you can read with a +- 5% up to +-10% more or less. Not counted in that, as i wrote above, didnt find 100% loot. Additionally i will not give numbers for some items because i just cant give numbers. For example ropes, broken arrows, paint spray or such.

Very last thing: The higher the number the more rounded up or rounded down it will be. Smaller numbers are more likely to be exact.

So take it with a grain of salt.

Lets start.

 

TOOLS:

7 x Hammers

24 x Prybars

16 x Hacksaws

33 x Hatchets

21 x Hunting knives

30 x Can openers

50 x Sewing kits

20 x Weapon cleaning kits

24 x Whetstones

24 x Pots

15 x Simple tools

15 x Quality tools

2 x Improvised hunting knives

1 x Improvised hatchet

 

FIRESTARTERS:

5 x Mag lenses

750 x Matches

800 x Wooden matches

9 x Firestrikers

 

WEAPONS:

70 x Maple saplings

110 x Birch saplings (= 330 Arrow shafts)

14 x Hunting rifles

100 x Hunting rifle ammo

10 x Revolver

300 x Revolver ammo

3 x Flare guns

15 x Flare gun ammo

 

MATERIALS:

190 x leather (including all harvested ones from boots i dont need)

1500 x cloth (including all harvested ones from clothing i dont need and all curtains of all kind where i dont need to use knive, only by hand)

 

LIGHT SOURCES AND FUEL:

35 x Storm lanterns

120 x Flares (red)

30 x Marine flares (blue)

50 x Lantern fuel (cannot say how much fuel but the amount of the cans)

13 x Jerry cans (same as above)

 

FOOD, DRINKS and MEDS (some are missing because i forgot to make a note):

210 x Sodas of all kind

15 x Go energy drinks

24 x Condensed milk

40 x Tomato soup

59 x Chocolate bars

51 x Granola bars

45 x Ketchup chips

50 x Salty crackers

65 x Energy bars

60 x Beef jerky

85 x Can of sardines

9 x Airline food of all kind

34 x MRE

40 x Dog food

970 x Reishi mushrooms (if prepared = 485 cups of tea)

1800 x Cat tail stalks

150 x Herbal teas

160 x Coffee

40 x Water purification tablets

230 x Rosehip teas (230 x 24 for raw)

650 x Lichen (unprepared, /3 for Lichen bandage)

40 x Antiseptics

 

Again, some is missing, some will be not very accurate, but some is. Some could be all there was, some i certainly did not see and found.

But it makes a very ok-ish rough picture of quantities on a slightly below Stalker loot setting.

I hope it helps someone to have at least some rough numbers to make decissions about difficulty loot adjustments or whatever you can make out of this numbers.

If you have questions about something specific, let me know.

6 hours ago, Leeanda said:

Now where's my magnifying lens....?

I spit my coffee all over the place. 🤣

How? Mods?

6 minutes ago, Leeanda said:

I have got a custom run but haven't played it for quite a while. I'm doing pilgrim to get the fire badge at the moment and it takes a long time! Its the only one I have left except darkwalker which I have no intention to do. 🙂 

On pilgrim there are so many herbal teas scattered around especially at TWM.  Mushrooms just don't seem worth the time. And the birch bark is plentiful at PV ,my home base. So I just pick it up there while I'm hunting the moose and bear.

I see. I needed 500 days on voyager to get all my desired badges. The worst and last one was blizzardwalker. At the end i was going outside if there was a blizzard lol and not staying inside as one normally would do. That gave me chills lol. But at the end, i found out that blizzards are not that much of a threat if you just go infront of the door covering outside of the shelter on that side which covered me from the wind. Good clothing and the stormlantern gave me the chance to stay long enough outdoor, even though i only found out later that there are shelters which also give you blizzardwalker advance even if you are just in it like a cave or open shelters. Which helped alot to get this badge going.

41 minutes ago, manolitode said:

Knife can't be better than hacksaw at the same time that hacksaw is better than knife for harvesting carcasses 50% frozen or more. Or are you comparing them both to some other tool? The knife will in fact be slightly faster for harvesting 50%+ frozen meat when you've capped the skill. The time difference however is disappearingly small. Nevertheless, we're obviously not dependent on the knife for harvesting carcasses once we've leveled up harvesting and could just as well save it for crafting essential clothing. And save the whetstones for the improved axe.

After thinking and reading again, i think you are right in so far that they eventually didnt count in the advanced skill levels.

19 minutes ago, Leeanda said:

I just dump the bottle of antiseptic on the floor as soon as I start a run and grab old man's beard , craft one and just carry it "just in case" ! In a 700+ day run it was still sitting there!  I never harvest mushrooms either! I do use birch bark but only as a different drink occasionally but not for recovery reasons.  I go through quite a few painkillers though! Lol!. Lots of sprains .. 

I would love more wolves on pilgrim ,sometimes I can see more bears on a map than wolves, perhaps the bears are eating them?🙂

So you didnt try custom difficulty? And yes, i also need alot of painkillers because of sprains. But not harvesting mushrooms? Cmon, they are so good, because at lvl 5 cooking you wont need them for sickness and you can use it as better water in terms of weight. They even give you 125 kcal ontop then. Best water after birch teas. Only herbal tea would be better, but those are emergency hydration before sleep if i had a struggle or other misfortune.

I do it like this:

First i use all mushroom teas, because its just water with some kcal and half the weight for the same hydration at the point you got lvl 5 cooking.

Then if they are gone, which is quite a long time, i go for birch bark, which i have alot by the time my mushrooms are gone.

That all of course as expedition hydration. Meat and normal water i mostly only consume at home if i am stationary for a longer period.